About Me

Kristin Bricker is a freelance journalist and translator. She specializes in militarization, social movements, and the drug war in Latin America.

Kristin is a contributor to the CIP Americas Program. She previously served as the Security Sector Reform Resource Centre's Latin America blogger. Her work has appeared in NACLA, the Huffington Post, IPS, Foreign Policy in Focus, Counterpunch, Telesur, Rebelión, Left Turn, The Indypendent, Upside Down World, Por Esto!, The Guatemala Times, and The News (Mexico). Kristin has appeared on Al-Jazeera, Democracy Now!, Radio Mundo (Venezuela), Morning Report (New Zealand), Radio Bemba (Mexico) and various Pacifica radio programs. Her work has been cited in the Los Angeles Times, Proceso, and the Congressional Research Service's Report for Congress.

Kristin contributed a chapter about Mexico's peace movement to Global Fire, Local Sparks, published by the Indypendent.

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Saturday, January 14, 2012

The following is part of an exchange between Professor Luis Villoro and the Zapatistas' Subcomandante Marcos. In that exchange, Villoro and Marcos contemplated the current security crisis that Mexico faces, as well as the nascent Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity's attempts to counter that crisis.

In this letter, Villoro and other Mexican intellectuals propose a "national pact" (something that the peace movement attempted in 2011) that would unite Mexican society around the goal of direct democracy.

Luis Villoro's Response to the Third Letter from Subcomandante Marcos

Greetings.

1. Let's continue this epistolary exchange by sharing visions when faced with the devastation that our country suffers, utilizing the reflection that you mention without trying to discover TRUTHS.

We agree that we can't hope for anything from the party-ocracy. As you Zapatistas say, "all politicians are the same." The institutional left as stopped being leftist.

2. I also agree that it is unjustifiable to blame the victims, a practice that is commonplace in the government, and I salute the respect that you have demonstrated in your last letter towards the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity that Javier Sicilia leads. I share that respect with an additional recommendation: to continue, yes, but without submitting oneself to the State's game.

3. A short while ago, Pablo González Casanova, Víctor Flores Olea, and I met because we were worried about the severity of the current situation. We finally managed to outline what we consider to be some of the necessary bases for a "national pact" for a Movement of movements, with the goal of making direct democracy a reality, that which is exercised in Zapatista peasant and indigenous communities, from below: that which can best be considered a real democracy. Let me share some points:

a. Direct Democracy beyond political parties.

b. Recognition of and support for the rights of indigenous peoples and their autonomies.

c. Defend national sovereignty, individual rights, and social and community rights.

d. Promote national education, public health, and social security.

e. Restructure the external debt and fiscal policy as well as recuperate the national patrimony to promote a new self-sustaining development project.

All of this, rescuing the idea of a Mexico that equals its life with its thinking.

With variations that will be determined, this project is an invitation to collectives, localities, entities, and sectors--that search for new alternatives for freedom, justice, and democracy--to form a minimum program that isn't just about talk, and that encourages other countries in our America.

4. This proposal comes about keeping in mind the agreement, already stated, that the alternative to the existing domination can not be a revolution in the traditional sense, but rather an organization such as that which the Other Campaign proposes.

5. We venture to say that the aforementioned "pact" could be strengthened with the coming together of two freedom movements: the Zapatista movement and Javier Sicilia's movement.